Chapter 5

By now, the man that Tommy had dangling upside down from the top of the St. Patrick’s Cathedral, with a short piece of weathered rope, had a very red face indeed. He hand hung there for the best part of three hours and it seemed he would be hanging there a few more.

But this was not in fact the truth.

Tommy paced back and forth in front of him, muttering something to himself, no doubt only intelligible to himself. He was clearly on edge. He tried to calm himself, but it was not possible. He sat down on a little wooden stool and took from his breast pocket a bronze cigarette case.

He eyed the man.

—Cigarette?

There was no answer.

Paddy looked at him. He tried to imagine him the right way round. He could not, for there was too much blood in his head.

His eyes pained him.

—Ah Jesus would you stop!

Fair enough.

—Please!

Fair enough. That is what I would I say. If I was hanging. Upside down. Dangling. Man.

Tommy stood up and lit himself a cigarette and pulled upon it with vigour. He exhaled with less vigour, which meant (possibly) that the act did indeed calm him some what.

I love smoking.

His smoke sailed silently above him into the air and he thought, with equal silence, to himself.

What a wonderful.

The name of the red faced man, whom by now was barely conscious, escaped Tommy. For the life of him, he could not remember his name or what he was to do with him. The day’s drinking had taken its toll and now he was unsure whether it really himself who was standing here. In truth, he felt entirely absent. He could not longer recollect who or what or where he was supposed to be.

Damned imaginings.

I am not psychologist.

He bent down to the man and whispered in his ear.

—What is your name?

—Ah Jesus. What are you talking about, Tommy?

—Who’s Tommy?

—You’re Tommy.

—Interesting. Very interesting. I assume this is some sort of strategy.

—Strategy?

—To save yourself?

Tommy drew heavily again upon the butt of the cigarette. He waved the cigarette out in front of Paddy’s face, as if to indicate meditation of so sort. His index figure extended outwards and the dirt on his fingernails was readily visible.

He looked at it.

Long and hard.

Long and hard.

Like a.

—Are you sure?

—Are you off your fucking head? Jesus, Tommy. Be reasonable. I am your friend. I am.

You get up morning and by night you may be dead. That is what Tommy thought. You get up. And.

That is what he was thinking.

In the morning. You do not. Know who you are.

How sad.

The man was now weeping, wildly, looking up and down and all around. He could see the street below.

Gesticulating.

—Maybe. Maybe not.

The man shook his head, knowing that neither Tommy nor he knew who Tommy was addressing.

—I could do with a drink. Where the fuck are we anyway?

Tommy stood up and flicked his cigarette off the edge of the precipice. It fell silently, slowly, as if someone was still watching it, slowly, silently down on to

Patrick’s Street below.

See it.

It was already out before it hit the ground.

—Would you let me down and we can talk about this, Tommy. We can sort all this out. Like men. Like the old days.

—Who’s talking about the old days? Where the fuck are they?

—Tommy. It’s Paddy. Paddy Fahey. Paddy Fahey from Prospect hill. In Galway. Do you not remember me for the love of Jesus! We drank together.

The blood had truly gone to Paddy’s head.

I never. But. How.

It was only then that Tommy recalled who it was who hung before him and what it was he was suppose to do with that thing, this man, dangling before him.

Tommy turned to him, and raised his right hand out to him.

—Jesus Paddy. How are you?

Paddy smiled.

—I’m well. I’m.

Fuck me.

In the faint hope that Tommy would not recall what it was he was supposed to do, Paddy stopped talking and closed his eyes.

La la. La la. Last moments. Are they? I assume they. Are.

But it was already too late.

—How’s the missus, Paddy?

He opened his eyes, but he was already gone, already falling towards his death.

Ho ho!

Watch him as he falls!

—Jesus, she’s grand.

—Still has an arse like a tractor?

—That’s the one!

They both laughed, but Paddy’s laugh was altogether different. It was of the very nervous kind, if you could even say that. The kind of laugh that continued on after the other laugh. The kind of laugh that wanted to continue forever because it knew what was going to come next.

It was a philosophical laugh, the kind that a psychologist would love to mine for meaning.

Of course it means something, doesn’t everything?

Tommy flicked the butt of another cigarette (which he had been smoking) out into the night sky and watched it fall down towards the passers-by below.

—It a fucking long way down, isn’t it? A fucking long way.

Paddy nervously eyed the ground far down below him.

—It is.

He laughed again.

—It is indeed.

—Do you know when they built this thing, Paddy?

He kicked the brick.

—Ah Jesus Tommy.

—It was built in 1191. Did you know that? And Dean Swift lived here. He wrote here. Somewhere here. Like a rat in a hole. And he’s buried here too. Beside his doxy, Stella. Ubi sæva Indignatio ulterius cor lacerare nequit, Abi Viator Et imitare, si poteris, Strenuum pro virili Libertatis Vindicatorem. Did you know all that Paddy?

But Paddy did not reply.

Because by that time he was already falling, already disappearing into the grey mist and haze of a dark Dublin night.

And then, it was like he had never been there. As if his whole life had not been heading towards that moment, but rather towards another moment, a moment less painful, a moment more his own.

A moment he could have called his own.

A life worth living.

Bollox.

Tommy turned away from the whole scene with a slight disgust and made his way toward the spiral staircase that would take him down to the gallery, and then to the nave, and then out the into the South close and down in the direction of Marsh’s Library.

Ah, the library!

The sound of Paddy hitting the ground was slight, and it nearly went unnoticed but for one child, who was curious enough to investigate the large unidentifiable mass slumped on the side of the pavement.

He stopped to examine it.

When he saw that it was body, a human body, he turned to his mother (who to be honest was a fare distance away) and shouted loudly in her general direction.

—Mother! Mother!

She cried back to him.

—What is it? What are you messing with now?

—It’s a man. It’s a man mother.

She looked at her son with abject bemusement.

—Don’t be silly. There’s no man there.

She turned to her friend and gestured to her with both her hands and eyes.

Quare.

They both laughed.

Then she turned again to her son.

—Come on now.

The boy looked one last time at the mangled body of the man. The eyes were still where they should be but everything else was elsewhere. The head was cracked like something badly broken.

Like a bowl.

Or a plate.

Or an egg.

An egg that had fallen and broken.

Smithereens!

Ho ho!

The boy turned and looked towards his mother. She was still standing there, were he thought she was, looking at him.

Strange.

He ran towards her, away from the mess, away from the remains, away from Paddy Faddy, formally of Prospect hill, Galway, Co. Galway. Paddy, whose wife would not remember him.

Paddy’s whose wife.

Enough.

It was bitterly cold night.

They walked on together, hand in hand, step by step, towards Crumlin, towards home, toward a fire and some food.

How lucky they were.

The little boy did not look back, not once, and when he got home he told his father nothing, nothing of the remains of Paddy Fahey, nor of the rings that he had taken from his fingers.

Nor of the egg like skull he had.

Smash!

Go to sleep now.